Room For Improvement
by PencilMonkeyGaiden
Summary: Emily learns a new insult. Evidently, most of Brockton Bay's gangs wish they'd never heard of that particular word.


**Room For Improvement**

**Summary:**  
Emily learns a new insult. Evidently, most of Brockton Bay's gangs wish they'd never heard of that particular word.

**Chapter I**

Emily slammed her fist down on her desk, glaring intently at the three people (for lack of a better term) seated opposite her.

"The entire Department is in an uproar! Rumours are running rampant!" Emily growled. "I want some damn answers, and I want them right god-damn _now!_"

"Yes, ma'am!" Vista nodded hurriedly.

"...Sure thing, director." Miss Militia seemed somewhat dazed and shell-shocked, but not from any of Emily's intimidations. "Good thing we brought a librarian, then."

"Ook?"

Emily arched an eyebrow, staring at the orang-utan sitting in one of her office chairs. The ape had folded his hands philosophically across his belly, leaning back in the seat and calmly eating a banana he held in one of his feet. (Or hind paws, or second set of hands, or... whatever the proper word for it might be.)

"Yes... I'd very much like to know what _he's_ doing here."

"He's, uh... He's here because of me, ma'am." Vista straightened in her seat, and cleared her throat. "I visited the library and, well... Somehow, some localized phenomenon within the library interacted oddly with my powers*, and... Um..."

Emily drummed her fingertips against the desk. "And then?"

"...I got lost, ma'am." Vista sounded deeply unhappy about admitting that fact.

"You got lost." Emily repeated in a flat voice. "Inside a library."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You, Vista, who possesses a set of powers that specifically allow you to warp space to suit your needs..."

"Yes, ma'am."

"...Got lost inside a library," Emily went on. "The teeny-tiny public library of Brockton Bay, which doesn't have room for a section on hobby books about stamp collecting, because the library is already small enough that you could practically fit a scale map of the building on the back of a postage stamp."

"_Yes_, ma'am." Vista gritted her teeth. "Like I said, some phenomenon within the library interacted with my space-warping power in a weird way... As if the space was already pre-warped, or... something."

"Right. Sure. Of course." Emily kept her expression carefully neutral. "Sounds like we'll have to investigate that, in case there's another Shaker in town, who might be causing this interference."

"Ook?" The orang-utan perked up, and proffered the half-eaten banana at Emily.

The PRT Director grimaced, recoiling a little in her seat. "What is he doing? Is he offering me a bite, or something?"

"Erm... I think he's asking if the shaking you mentioned involved banana milkshakes." Vista shrugged. "Sorry, no such luck."

The orang-utan made a disappointed grunting noise, and slumped back in his chair.

"Anyway, after wandering the library labyrinth for a while, I eventually met, uh... Mr. Ook, here." Vista gestured at the orang-utan. "He helped me find the way out, but he also insisted that I had to get a proper library card... Apparently, there was something wrong with my old one."

Emily rubbed her temples. "Understandable, I suppose. Most bureaucracies run on paperwork."

Miss Militia eyed the ape beside her. "And bananas, apparently."

"Ook!"

"In any case," Vista went on. "To get that library card, I needed an adult's signature, as well. Once we got out of the library, the first person we found who could do the signing was Miss Militia."

"Ah." Emily glanced at one of the reports in front of her. "Would this have been the point where you interrupted Miss Militia in the middle of a fight with the Merchants?"

"Yes, ma'am." Miss Militia nodded slowly. "Skidmark was the first who noticed the presence of, ah... of the librarian. He immediately pointed and laughed, and then... Um..."

The bandana-wearing cape leaned forward in her chair, shooting a cautious look at the orang-utan, before she whispered the next part of her explanation.

"...Then, Skidmark used _the M-word_."

Emily frowned, glancing at the exposed bits of Miss Militia's dark skin that weren't covered by her costume. "You mean, the N-word?"

Miss Militia stared up at the ceiling, and sucked in a deep breath of air, stalling for air.

"Nooo," she said. "It was definitely the M-word. Trust me on that one, ma'am."

Emily narrowed her eyes. "And which word would that be, pray tell?"

"Um..." Miss Militia and Vista were both glancing nervously at the orang-utan, by now.

"Y'know... The M-word?" Vista said. "A word that some people use to describe an individual of a, uh... simian persuasion, so to speak? A term that definitely doesn't mean the same as the word "ape"?"

Emily stared incredulously at the two capes in front of her. "You mean... Monk-"

Hands clapped over Emily's mouth. In a fraction of a second, both Vista and Miss Militia had launched themselves across the desk (Vista possibly even having used her power to shorten the distance), and grappled Emily.

"Don't say the word, ma'am!"

After a certain amount of yelling and reprimanding, Emily managed to get her temper under control again after the sudden manhandling, and got the two capes to settle back down in their seats.

"So," Emily growled. "How badly did the fight go, after Vista and... and the librarian interrupted you?"

Miss Militia coughed awkwardly into her fist. "Well, uh... We have the Merchants in custody, ma'am."

"What?!" Emily barked. "Which ones? Skidmark? Squealer? Mush? Who?"

"Erm... All of them, ma'am."

Emily was probably a little bit wide-eyed, by now. "How did that happen?!"

"Well... Skidmark said the M-word." Vista gestured at the orang-utan. "That turned out to be, uh... a very bad idea."

"Ook!"

"At that point, the Empire Eighty-Eight showed up, as well," Miss Militia went on, sheepishly scratching the back of her head. "We, uh... We caught them, too."

Emily cradled her head in her hands, propping her elbows up against the desk. "How many?"

"Ah, well... Uh... All of them."

Emily was definitely wide-eyed, at this point. "All of them? All of the Empire?"

"Erm... Yes?"

"_How?!_"

"Uh... Banana peels were involved," Miss Militia said.

"And Mr. Ook had this trick where he grabbed a villain in one hand, and a second villain in the other hand," Vista explained, using wide gestures to illustrate her story. "And then he balanced on his _third_ hand, while he used his _fourth_ hand to..."

"Oh, please don't remind me!" Miss Militia held a hand over her mouth, looking slightly queasy**.

Emily stared at the orang-utan, then back at Miss Militia. "Are you saying that the m- ...The _librarian_ incapacitated two parahuman gangs, single-handedly?!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sometimes three-handedly, when he did that trick with the-"

"Vista, would you _please_ stop talking about that?!"

Emily took a deep breath. "Vista? Did you get somebody to sign that library card for you?"

"Uh... Not yet, ma'am."

"Alright, then." Emily held out an expectant hand. "Give it to me. I'll sign it for you."

A short while later, Vista was the proud owner of a freshly signed, brand new library card (issued from some obscure institution called "U.U. Oxsilliarry Lybrarie Secktionne", with the words "Broggtun Bey" scrawled in parentheses next to it), and Emily was the relieved owner of a newly orang-utan-free office. Evidently, the librarian had been satisfied with seeing the library card finally get signed, and decided to amble off to... well, go back wherever he'd come from.

"Alright. You're dismissed." Emily nodded at the two capes. "I've got a memo to write."

"A memo?" Miss Militia's eyes squinched in a frown behind her bandana. "What about, ma'am?"

Emily grunted. She had a variety of disgruntled noises in her repertoire; this particular grumble was one she saved for special occasions.

"It seems that there is an urgent need for all PRT staff to know what an orang-utan looks like," she explained. "And how to pronounce it."

Emily sighed gustily. "Most importantly, the PRT code of conduct needs to be updated. There's going to be strict regulations against use of... the M-word."

**RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. RFI. **

*The PRT later speculated that a girl called Elle, otherwise known under the cape name Labyrinth, might have been responsible for the odd space-warping phenomena observed at the library. Someone coined the phrase "Elle-space", and was summarily ignored.

**When Miss Militia had jumped across the desk at Emily and clamped a hand over her mouth, Emily had noticed that the cape's bandana carried a faint whiff of vomit. Presumably, the earlier fight against the Merchants, and the orang-utan's actions during that event, must been an extremely unpleasant affair - Miss Militia was a seasoned veteran, and it took some seriously unsettling sights for her to (as Assault might put it) end up turning her star-spangled bandana into a barf-speckled one.


End file.
